Meirababies Drabbles
by Claire D'Aubigne
Summary: Some loosely connected drabbles of Alba & Soiree when they were young.
1. 01 Connection

Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I affiliated with anyone who owns or has any random connection to, SNK, Neo Geo, King of Fighters, or Alba or Soiree. This is a fanwork and I'm not making any profit off of this.

The box sat in Alba's closet for years. He didn't ever mention that he'd gone back to the orphanage after he'd turned eighteen and retrieved the stuff, so as far as he knew Soiree had no idea any of their stuff was here.

Alba finally decided to take the box out one day, and he sat on his bed and to go through the contents. There was a threadbare bunny rabbit, dressed in faded blue overalls with a carrot sticking out the pocket and no left ear. He remembered this rabbit—it was Soiree's, and his brother had hauled that thing around for years. If Alba remembered correctly, his had been a frog.

Gingerly, he sat the bunny on his bed and reached into the box again, smiling a little when the next thing he pulled out was the green frog. Since nobody was around to see him, he stroked it and gave it a little squeeze. It was as soft as he remembered.

He sat Frog down by Soiree's bunny, debating on whether or not he should separate them.

The rest of the box was mostly clothes and things they'd left behind when they ran away. It didn't hold any particular significance or importance to him.

There was also a videotape, which made Alba frown in curiosity and he got up to put it in. It was a home movie of two boys—Soiree and himself, he realized—maybe five months old and sitting waist-deep in the bathtub. They were splashing around, laughing and playing something like bumper boats.

Alba sat on the edge of his bed and watched the twins giggle. It was like watching someone else's life. And the voices he didn't remember, behind the camera—those must have been his parents.

"Hey Alba are we out of..."

He didn't even turn around to acknowledge his brother's comment, but Soiree didn't bother to finish, just sat down beside him. He touched the soft right ear of the bunny rabbit, his eyes fixed on the screen.

Baby Soiree threw his hands flat on the water, laughing, but the wave hit baby Alba in the face and he blinked for a couple of seconds, stunned, and then started wailing. Soiree jumped, and then started crying too, and the camera shut off.

"Well," Soiree said after a second, "I guess it's good for me that you weren't so badass back then, if I did that now I don't think you'd cry."

"No," Alba replied, and watched as Soiree stood up. He was thankful that Soiree didn't ask where the box came from.


	2. 02 Look What You've Done

****

Disclaimer: Same as the first drabble.

Their father watched from the park bench as the twins played. Alba was apparently the braver of the two; Soiree watched from the bottom of the small slide as his brother climbed the five steps of the ladder and slid down. Both twins clapped, and Alba giggled, standing on chubby, wobbling legs and doing his best to coax Soiree to go down the slide too.

The third kid standing by looked a little older than his boys, but their father didn't think anything of it until the boy pushed Soiree down. Soiree fell onto his butt, and burst into startled tears. Their father was already up and heading that way, but Alba wasn't willing to wait.

"No push Say-say!" he yelled, his voice carrying remarkably well across the playground as he launched himself at the bully, who didn't care that two feet of pissed off two-year-old had attacked him.

Their father couldn't there fast enough—the bully laughed and grabbed a fistful of Alba's hair, and he screamed but kept pummeling with his tiny fists. Soiree was screaming for him to stop and struggling to get up to help his brother.

About that time, the bully saw him coming and let Alba go, pushing him back so he fell onto Soiree and sent them both flying to the ground again as he ran off. The pain finally registered with Alba and he started crying too, sitting up so he wasn't sprawled across Soiree's legs anymore.

Their father picked one twin up in each arm, shushing them both as he paced around, not knowing whether he should praise the boys for being protective of each other or scold them for fighting on the playground. By the time they stopped crying, though, they'd fallen asleep and he didn't want to wake them up to yell at them. He figured he could let it go… once.


	3. 03 Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind

The twins had always shared a bed. There had been one time, when they had just learned to talk, that their parents had tried to separate them but they spent all night crying. Soiree, the louder of the two, wailed "Ab-ba!" at the top of his lungs until someone paid attention, and Alba would quietly sniffle and rub at his eyes with a fist, trying to shush Soiree even though he was crying just as much.

So after two nights of absolutely no sleep for anyone in the household, they were allowed to sleep together again. They were asleep in under five minutes. Their mother stood in the blissful silence and watched her babies sleep and knew that as long as she lived she'd never forget the way they looked with their eyes swollen from two days and nights of cranky cries and no sleep, face-to-face with their arms and legs folded in a fetal position between them, and their heads bent so they were touching.

She wondered if that was how they'd been positioned in the womb, and then shook her head as she went to pull the single blanket over both boys. It didn't matter, she decided as she went to go get some much-needed sleep herself.


End file.
